Batman v Superman

It’s been nearly two years since Superman’s (Henry Cavill) colossal battle with Zod (Michael Shannon) devastated the city of Metropolis. The loss of life and collateral damage left many feeling angry and helpless, including crime-fighting billionaire Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck). Convinced that Superman is now a threat to humanity, Batman embarks on a personal vendetta to end his reign on Earth, while the conniving Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) launches his own crusade against the Man of Steel.

At Major Spoilers, we strive to create original content that you find interesting and entertaining. If you would like to support our efforts, please become a patron today.

The Author

Stephen Schleicher

Stephen Schleicher began his career writing for the Digital Media Online community of sites, including Digital Producer and Creative Mac covering all aspects of the digital content creation industry. He then moved on to consumer technology, and began the Coolness Roundup podcast. A writing fool, Stephen has freelanced for Sci-Fi Channel's Technology Blog, and Gizmodo. Still longing for the good ol' days, Stephen launched Major Spoilers in July 2006, because he is a glutton for punishment.

You can follow him on Twitter @MajorSpoilers and tell him your darkest secrets...

Huh! So this was a pleasant surprise. As was the case with you guys, I had very low expectations for this, to the extent that I performed the cardinal sin of listening to your podcast before seeing the movie, having pretty much decided off of the critical reaction that I wouldn’t bother wasting my time with it.

So what a pleasant surprise to hear that it’s not a complete train wreck.

Off of something Stephen said, I had a question for you guys. It was mentioned that, for someone with the comic background, they could get a lot more out of this movie than someone who only knows the very basics of Bats & Supe. Although I’ve read a few of the more famous Batman trades, I’d certainly consider myself as fairly uneducated in that domain. So – I’d love to hear if you had a recommended reading list for getting more out of this movie!

Definitely recommend having the background before you go see it. As Stephen said, the movie almost fails because it demands that you know so much of the story before you watch it. My kids are fairly unaware of the Doomsday and DKR storylines and they found the movie “incomplete”… I had to fill in a lot of gaps afterwards before they realized that it was a good movie.

Commenting as I listen, so this might be a few nested comments… As for the knife in the body armor, it looked to me as if it was a stab to the torso, if you were to imagine normal bullet proof armour, just to the side of the reinforced part, slightly under the arm, where the armour would have to flex to allow breathing and twisting. As Rob said, solid everywhere it *has* to be, but you don’t make the entire thing rigid. It was probably a simple cut-proof weave meant to prevent slashes and glancing blows, but a direct shot or piercing attack applied just right would make it through. It did not appear to be a random stab out of nowhere, it seemed like a deliberate placement to me.

As a person that has never seen Man of Steel, but has seen enough of the snippets and summaries and such that have been around for years, I was able to follow along, but I am sure that I missed some of the direct references that were made to it. It did not harm my enjoyment of this movie, though adding some little touches and layers might have added to it a bit. As I am one of those guys who enjoys ‘getting it’ when they put things like that in. The movie never lost me, I know the source material pretty well, and I went along with it.

I think the part where they lay out the whole Meta-human thing, and have little clips and such was, yes a way to tie in the Justice League film, but in-universe, it simply showed that Lex was learning about more than just Superman, and was beginning to prepare for may more ‘heroes’ to come, Sup’s was just his first target as he was the most well known, and seemed to be the biggest power-wise. Sure it could have been cut, but I thought that it did have a place in both DCF-universe building as well as in-movie for showing that Lex was not *only* stressing and planning over Superman, but he had an entire file about others as well.

yeah, Jeffry was channeling the Joker, I certainly got that vibe, too. But the speech, where he kinda trails off, loses his direction and just ends it abruptly, that shows that he is unhinged in a away that makes even him lose track of himself now and then, and it worked for me. Made it more real ‘crazy’ as opposed to someone like the Joker who has had decades of practice (or at least the people making the Joker stories) at being a real Psycho. I enjoyed Lex, it was a ride seeing him work everyone over, putting all of his pieces in play. Well done, well acted, IMHO.

However, since the actor playing Lex was as young as he was, I assumed this was a Lex, Jr., or a very young Lex. Brilliant, but still manic and full of energy, wanting to do it his way and trampling everyone to get it, but without having developed the ‘diplomatic’ (if you can call Lex diplomatic, he has yelled and directly threatened a lot of people over the years) side of his charisma. His charisma now is coming from his convictions and energy, once he has matured and been abused by life more, I can see him coming back as the Lex that Rob wanted.

I think if you have to do homework to watch a movie, it’s probably not a good movie. If I present a foreign movie to you and say, “You won’t understand this unless I give you a history/language/sociology lesson to explain 60% of the movie,” you will probably not appreciate it.

Second, for a superhero movie, it’s very lazy writing. Jimmy Olsen’s death would be meaningful if we had seen his story. But we didn’t. This is some CIA agent that we’ve never met before. Superman’s statue would be meaningful if it stood for all his years and efforts at making the world a better place. But it didn’t. He smashed up a city and caused tons of collateral damage only 18 months before. Superman’s death would have meant something if he had had a relationship with society at large. But he didn’t. He was reclusive, dismissive of authority, and vindictive. Zack Snyder wanted us to have an emotional reaction to these characters because of our history with them, but he threw all that history out. He gutted his own movie of meaningful emotional attachment to make it “gritty,” “edgy,” and “more modern.”

And that’s my biggest complaint of this movie. All the killing and mayhem is one thing, but there’s no point at all to the violence. Batman criticizes Superman for being so dangerous, but then proceeds to be a wrecking ball in order to get his way. It doesn’t matter if Batman kills or not. Pinning the criticism on whether it shows him killing or not is like saying Man of Steel is ok because it doesn’t showing Superman killing civilians. Completely beside the point. We need more insight into who they are as people because that’s what drives their actions. And unfortunately, both are essentially the same character: break everything in your way.

That’s not a story. That’s a fireworks show. Interesting to look at, but ultimately forgotten the next day.

I’m just now starting to listen to this.podcast so I know this is 9 months later. That said I found Masons.question about if people would understand what was a going.on if they hadn’t seen an of steel to be really good.

I had seen man of steel in its theatrical release but never rewatched it. Then I saw BvS and recognized things from man of Steel but didn’t think much .more on it. More recently I happened to see the last half of.Man of Steel on one of the movie channels and later that week I rewatched BvS. I found having that.movie fresh in my mind actually.made me appreciate BvS more.

So while I don’t think you need to have watched man of steel beforehand I think having watched it adds to the experience.